"PHU" 2005 Obituary

PHUM o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2005-04-01 published
Night of horror
Friends were unable to prevent the fight between buddies that
left one of them dead on the street in a pool of blood with his
girlfriend weeping over his body.
By Jennifer
O'BRIEN,
FreePressReporter
A 20-year-old London father is dead, one of his best Friends
is accused of killing him and his heartbroken girlfriend and
Friends are left wondering why it happened. James
BLAIR, the
guy "who always had a smile," died Wednesday night after he was
stabbed in the stomach in front of a northwest London apartment
building.
Eighteen-year-old Mwangi
GETHIGA -- known as Kuggy to his Friends
was charged yesterday with second-degree murder.
BLAIR and
GETHIGA had a fist fight in the apartment at 75 Oakville
Ave. that is across the hall from where
BLAIR's girlfriend, Sonyda
KHOUN, lives with their son, Latteral, Friends said yesterday.
"He was the nicest kid, man. He always had a smile on his face,"
said Sok PHUM, 26, one of many Friends who gathered outside the
building yesterday.
"He always brought you up. That's the way he was."
Still stunned by what they'd seen the night before, Friends were
struggling to make sense of what had happened to "one of the
coolest kids around."
"We were all sitting around the apartment like always," said
Jon COLEBY, 19, one of three roommates who live in the apartment
where the fight broke out. "We are all really good Friends. They
(BLAIR and
GETHIGA) hung out every day."
As he spoke,
COLEBY occasionally put a hand up to the bridge
of his nose, where a purple bruise reminded him of the fight
he'd tried desperately to stop the night before.
A crowd of Friends, including
BLAIR,
GETHIGA and
COLEBY, were
drinking beer and planning to take out turntables later to do
some freestyle rapping,
COLEBY said.
BLAIR was a gifted freestyler, he said. "And when he got drunk,
he loved to freestyle."
But that night the skinny, fun-loving dad with the dreadlocks
never got the chance.
BLAIR became drunk and obnoxious, said Jessica
ROBERTS, 18, who
lives with
COLEBY and another roommate in the apartment.
"He just started being rowdy and annoying," she said.
Some of the Friends told
BLAIR to leave, and he did. But about
10 minutes later, he came back into the ground-floor unit.
GETHIGA then told
BLAIR to "get out, that he wasn't wanted in
there at the time,"
COLEBY said.
BLAIR took issue with that and the two Friends started pushing,
then punching each other, while others tried to break it up,
COLEBY said.
BLAIR left the apartment. But when he was outside, he shouted
a racial slur to
GETHIGA, he said.
"(GETHIGA) just went in the kitchen and grabbed a knife,"
COLEBY
said. "We all started fighting with him, trying to get him to
drop the knife, but he was fighting and punching, he punched
me in the face... and we couldn't get it."
GETHIGA made his way out.
By the time
COLEBY got outside,
BLAIR was down in front of the
building, lying in a pool of blood only metres away from his
baby boy, his girlfriend and his Friends.
"There was all this blood and his face was so pale,"
COLEBY shuddered.
"He was gurgling."
It was chaos.
BLAIR's girlfriend, Khoun, raced outside. At one point, she held
her baby's father in her arms, screaming and crying.
She also called 911, while Friends tried cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
"She was hysterical," said
COLEBY.
She was holding
BLAIR on the
ground, crying out 'Who did this?'
At a friend's house later yesterday afternoon, the devastated
young mother could hardly speak.
Holding her 23-month-old in her arms, tears rolled down her cheeks.
Then Khoun asked for a pen and paper to write something to her
boyfriend of four years.
"We miss your smile, goofiness and loud mouth," she wrote. "Latteral
and I will always love you deep within our hearts... We didn't
lose anything. We gained an angel," she wrote.
BLAIR was born and raised in London, went to Sir Wilfrid Laurier
secondary school and was taking adult education when he died,
his Friends said.
"We're all Friends. We all grew up together," said Ken
PHOMSAMOUT.
"He had this great big smile."